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Google Donates $2Million to Wikipedia

Today, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that Google will be donating $2 Million to the Wikimedia foundation, the foundation that runs Wikipedia.

The money donated by google matched that of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and brings Wikimedia well past it’s $10.6 million revenue target for the fiscal year. Wikimedia, the non-profit organisation, has received 240,000 donations this fiscal year, mainly in small amounts from Wikipedia users.

Wikipedia have stated that “as an unrestricted gift we’ll be able to support operations for Wikipedia and our other free knowledge projects across multiple priorities.” Google co-founder Sergey Brin called Wikipedia “one of the greatest triumphs of the internet,” which goes to show the special relationship Google and Wikipedia have.

In other Google news, Thursday will be the day Google get their day in court, as they ask a US judge to approve their plan to scan millions of books and sell them online. This comes after a 2005 lawsuit filed by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers (AAP) against Google claiming copyright infringement.